🔗 Share this article

Transpired Ruben Amorim was able to withstand losing against lower-league opposition. He weathered losing a crucial European final against a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He withstood home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, squandering some of the club’s most promising academy products, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the poorest in Manchester United history. But there was a single opponent against whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to engage. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning 1994-95 season, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a manager who often railed his squad for failing in one-on-one duels crumbling in the face of the intense pressure and formidable presence of one of the Premier League’s most intimidating sporting directors.

And frankly, this entire painful saga seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been tempting, based on his brief stint of experience at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as little more than a functionary within the club's structure: a man whose appointment was due as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada rather than any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, he has demonstrated to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that United’s competitors will now be rightly wary.

A Strategic Conflict Regarding Formation and Ideology

For example, it was the director who being involved in the leadership that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach in the first place, played a key role in attempting to convince him to ditch his favored 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties faced pushback. However, such directives carry more weight when delivered by a man of a man the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, holder of international appearances and a role in a title-winning side from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his thought processes publicly. Maybe one day questions may arise why Amorim is departing with a full payout, with no penalty clause activated. But Jason Wilcox seldom speaks publicly, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – function at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear is a series of high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite the same as being ready to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Authority Behind the Throne

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, after all, merely executing the commands of his ultimate superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his preference for a back four. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to adopt analytics and analytics. Per reports, in an executive meeting early in his investment, he declared that the team's approach to football “will be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in these intricate footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in industry and sailing. Above all he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the wealthy are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, more tactically astute, fundamentally superior. Whom else could one trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the building of a new stadium that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of a new striker?

The New Football Hierarchy: Directors Above Managers

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing in top-tier of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly entrusted major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously possible for a young, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to go into a club and see their vision supported to fruition. Yet how many businesses have such individuals set up? How many large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to place the real power where it belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the strategy in the boardroom and appoint someone who will adapt their methods accordingly. If coaches were once chefs, they have become more like Deliveroo drivers: not responsible for the food, but still finally accountable if it arrives cold or fails to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job has become not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they can do little to change. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into Europe and wins domestic cups, and essentially is dismissed for talking. Wilfried Nancy sees his reputation ruined while the people who appointed him live to blunder another day.

The Modern Corporate Football: Responsibility Only for the Few

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents neoliberalism at work: the rise of a gilded elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions remain untouchable, whose mistakes can always be resolved by sacking without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to dismiss them for using excessively that system. Hire the project manager and later discard them for requiring excessive time. And most importantly show gratitude; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.